This article is the result of my look back at 2012. I have uploaded the WORD (docx) file I used to compose the article. I think it makes for a handy quick reference that can be searched. I find trying to search the blog for specific information less than ideal. So, if you want a quick reference to when things happened, get the file. Please do not re-post or publish it.

This article is long. But, check it out to see how many things you remember. I was surprised how much I had forgotten. I was also surprised how fast and how slow some things happened.

January 2012 – 46 Articles

In January the Mesh Deformer went to Alpha version. See: #SL Mesh Deformer Goes Alpha. Karl Stiefvater (in-world: Qarl Fizz) released a video of it in action. Later in the moth I was describing how it worked and some of the problems with the first version. See: #SL Content-Mesh UG Week 2. Over a year later the project is still in testing.

The Milkshake Viewer made a short début. I wrote about 12 viewer reviews.

In January we got a scare from Blender Development when they considered dropping Collada support. I think this lead to Linden Lab and Domino Marama and Gaia Clary getting involved with the Blender developers. We now have good support of Collada for Second Life in Blender.

The first week of January saw a hardware failure trash a roll out and bring Second Life to its knees. Through the rest of the month we saw rolls succeeding. Scripting was seeing revision of List functions that gave us better performance. Most List functions were in testing through January.

Advanced Creator Tools aka Experience Tools were just a hot rumor.

Direct Delivery went into Beta testing January 10. By the end of the month merchants were crying a river about how bad Magic Box delivery was getting.

We got the ability to cross into any of the 8 surrounding regions. Previous we could only enter 4 (East, West, North, and South).

The Linden Scripting Language was advancing so fast the viewer’s script editor was falling behind. An effort was started to enable the viewer to update its scripting language syntax from the region servers. I think that task remains incomplete. But, scripting changes have slowed and the viewer’s editor is catching up.

Older versions of viewers began to disappear from Linden’s download pages. I begin to write about how the Linden 1.23.x viewer would soon no longer be used. I just recently wrote another of those articles in regard to Server Side Avatar Baking. It might actually happen sometime in 2013… Shows what I knew, not.

Qarl Fizz’s alignment tool was rejected by Linden Lab. It has been adopted by several Third Party Viewers. If you have forgotten why it was rejected see: Qarl Alignment Tool Rejected. There is quite a bit of speculation in the article.

Toward the end of the month we saw the US administration roll out new efforts to get SOPA and PIPA like laws on the books. Executive Orders and efforts to sign a treaty with the UN to give control of the Internet to the U.N. continue. Remember the majority of U.N. members are NOT democracies. See: I’m Back… and SOPA, PIPA, OPENA, and ACTA. This is still something people everywhere need to fight.

A new combat meter was release in Second Life around the end of the month: UnityCore. One of the larger role play games in SL adopted it: Lands of NoR.

Lands of NoR December 2012

The Imprudence and Kokua development team was deciding what to do with their efforts and how and whether to continue developing the viewers or not. I just wrote a similar article in late November.